An individual's longitudinal medication history can include a chronological history of medications the patient has taken over a period of time. One measure of a patient's longitudinal medication history can include the number and types of over the counter (“OTC”) medications and/or prescription medications a patient has purchased over a time period. In general, an individual goes to a pharmacy to purchase OTC medications and/or prescription medications. However, an individual's identification information, the pharmacy they purchase medications from, and/or the health insurance company they have can change over a period of time. Correspondingly, an individual's medication history can be distributed over many covered entities (e.g., insurance companies and pharmacies) during a given time period. For example, an individual may go to different pharmacies to have their prescriptions filled and/or to purchase OTC medications. In such an example, an individual's medication history is distributed over multiple pharmacies. In another example, the individual may get their medications from store A of Pharmacy Chain in City A and Store B of Pharmacy Chain in City B. In such an example, the pharmacy chain may identify the patient as two distinct individuals because the individual's identification information (e.g., the patient's address) has changed. Accordingly, it can be difficult to accurately establish a patient's longitudinal medication history because, for example, a patient's medication information can be distributed over multiple covered entities and/or distributed with different identification information.
Furthermore, patient privacy regulations can complicate establishing an individual's longitudinal medication history. Patient privacy regulations can include, but are not limited to, rules promulgated by the Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPPA”) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (“HITECH”) Act. Such patient privacy regulations limit what type of and how patient information can be shared among covered entities absent patient consent or contractual relationship between covered entities. For example, patient privacy regulations do not allow patient medication history data to be shared across the same type of covered entity absent an individual's consent (e.g., distinct pharmacy are not permitted to share patient medication history data absent an individual's consent). Furthermore, even when consent is given by an individual, patient privacy regulations do not permit another individual's information data to be accessed even if only to determine the other individual is not the individual who gave consent. Accordingly, it can be difficult to establish the full scope of a patient's medication history over long periods of time in accordance with applicable patient privacy regulations.